In his book The Teamsters, Steven Brill makes the point that by 1974 the Central States Pension Fund of the Teamsters Union had more than $1 billion dollars loaned out for commercial real-estate ventures, including casinos. This was only 20 percent less than was loaned out by the financial powerhouse, Chase Manhattan Bank. “In short,” said Brill, “the mob had control of one of the nation’s major financial institutions and one of the very largest private sources of real-estate investment capital in the world.”
